Much trimmed for (slightly better) brevity... My previous paragraphs marked w #, Jean's marked with % My new stuff with &
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2020 10:33:39 +0300 From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> To: Arthur Torrey <arthur_tor...@comcast.net> Cc: libreplanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org>, Richard Stallman <r...@gnu.org> Subject: Re: My take on trademarks vs. copyright, patents, etc. * Arthur Torrey <arthur_tor...@comcast.net> [2020-11-01 23:04]: # I agree with RMS about the badness of patents and the desirability of copyleft (which REQUIRES copyRIGHT to work!) but as far as I am concerned, trademarks are generally a good thing and should be protected... % When software author prevents people to modify software and issue modified software under original name that IS practical obstacle to share software. & Trademarks don't stop you from modifying, or issuing modified software under a different name, this is sometimes called FORKing the code.... (assuming you don't want to share your mods upstream / upstream doesn't want to include them...) Trademarks ONLY serve to keep you from distributing your modified version under the SAME trademark % By principle I should be able to modify software AS I WISH, right? & Yes, absolutely... However you should not be able to use someone else's name in distributing your modified version. You may be benign, but there are bad actors out there that might want to damage your reputation, or cause other harms... & In my previous post I mentioned the vi vs. viGOR story... It is ancient in computer terms, but there is a web comic called User Friendly http://www.userfriendly.org/, and C. 2003 they had an arc involving a semi-evil genius attempting world destruction by creating a modified version of 'vi' that added a version of Microsoft's (not-so) helpful "Clippy" to an otherwise stock 'vi' and attempting to make it go viral. It was fiction when written, but the free software world being what it is, someone promptly was inspired to create it... See http://vigor.sourceforge.net/index.shtml & I have no idea if 'vi' is trademarked, I never looked, but if "I" held the 'vi' trademark, I would be seriously upset if someone started distributing 'vigor' under the vi name, as it is NOT the same program.... & I want to be sure that if I download a copy of 'vi' (or get it in a distro as part of the install) I get the REAL vi, not vigor.... (actually these days I'd probably get vim, but the vi command starts it just fine...) % When there is such clause that I cannot name software as I wish, I am thus not free. So for me, independent of other people' opinion, such trademark clause is making software non-free, as it forces me to modify the command name, or name of software prior to distribution. & You are forced to change the package name you distribute under, you are NOT required by trademark law (but may be by licensing or other restrictions) to change the command name, or any other detail... & In physical object land, it is possible to make and sell a motorcycle (and there were companies that did) made with 100% aftermarket parts, that appeared identical to a Harley in most respects (and some claimed to be better) However you could NOT call it a Harley-Davidson, as it was not made by them - I think that this was eventually ruled illegal because of 'look and feel' infringements, but AFAIK, it is still not clear just how the line is drawn between legal and not... More significantly, many of the clones were crap, which made the general idea less popular, and also market conditions changed so there was less of a shortage of 'real' HD's so not as much demand for the clones... % Obstacles like that are popularly made by Mozilla or by Rust. For that reason many GNU/Linux distributions decided to fork Firefox and change its names. That is why we have "Iceweasel". & And I'd be willing to lay odds that if you started distributing a package with a modified version of Iceweasel that worked the same but sent all your data to Fakebook, and did NOT change the package name, there would soon be lawyers banging on your door.... % It is great obstacle to modify 2809 occurences of the term "rust" in Rust programming language. & But unless the Rust license requires that, you aren't required to by trademark law... Even if you were, it doesn't seem that hard to do a 'search & replace' w/ most editors... % Imagine if `gawk' is trademark (maybe it is) and that copyright holder also requires that modification to gawk must change the name of the gawk due to reason that gawk is a trademark. That would automatically break all the other scripts depending on gawk. & Repeat; trademarks only require you to change the name of the package, not how it is called... However there are also things like aliases, or even a simple script called 'gawk' that calls whatever your modified program is called... Now if you changed the options / command syntax, etc. there would be problems, but nothing requires any changes to the interface... % It is NOT ALIGNED with four freedoms! Imagine if GNU or trademark holder would start imposing trademark on people who innocently improve `gnumeric' or `gnucash' and call it `gnumeric-improved' or `gnucash-ng'. What would then happen? Would we making friends this way? Would we be helping people to share software or putting attention how to sue them for some money? & IANAL, but my understanding of just how much one must change a package name to avoid infringing a trademark is that is a bit 'fuzzy' but the basic legal principle is that the change need only be enough to make it clear that the changed version is not the original, and not the product of the original developers... I believe this would rule out keeping the same name and tacking a modifier on the end, as it would be unclear that this was not a 'gnumeric' version as opposed to a product of a different developer... % Such trademark policies on software names may not hold water in many countries including in the US. & The details of policy / legal enforcement are tricky (lawyers hate simplicity, as it keeps them from getting the big bucks for dealing with complexity) but the basic principle is clear - you can't sell your product based on someone else's name and reputation... % One cannot just relinquish the trademark use by giving it to users as "command name" and later claim it is trademark. It is arguable by law in the US and by law in other countries. That is "losing trademark control". <snip> & Again there are mixed cases on this, but I'd agree that it is better to have a distinction. However it isn't 100% essential... As I understand it, there can be a separation drawn between sharing a user interface (which would include a command) and a product name / brand, especially if it has a logo attached to it... Note how FireFox has a logo, and that is what's trademarked... <Balance trimmed> ART ------------------ Arthur Torrey - <arthur_tor...@comcast.net> ------------------- _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss